


a snapshot moment

by crowkag



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, College Student Peter Parker, Domestic Fluff, Everybody Lives, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, NOT STARKER - Freeform, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Photo Shoots, Precious Peter Parker, Time Skips, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, like....so many u guys. so many, wooo!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowkag/pseuds/crowkag
Summary: Like any other fan worth their salt, Peter Parker collected magazine cutouts of his favorite heroes when he was younger. Which, of course, included Iron Man.Years later, Tony returns the favor. He’s just a bit more of a dad about it.(or: How time, distance, and change mean absolutely nothing when compared to love.)
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, so many...pete & tony are the main relationship tho
Comments: 37
Kudos: 295





	a snapshot moment

**Author's Note:**

> welcome back to sappy parent land <3 no real warnings here! maybe mild stuff for tony feeling Kinda Sad in the first part, but it’s just because peter’s growing up way too fast for his liking :’) there are also a couple curse words sprinkled in.
> 
> huge THANK YOU to users BloodMonastery and mixermiz907 for looking this over for me <333
> 
> enjoy!

As it turned out, helping one Peter Parker get all packed up for college involved a lot more crying than Tony ever anticipated.

All of the tears were on his part, though. His frequent forays into the apartment building’s stairwell to call up Pepper, voice choked with pride or panic or both, were apparently nothing short of _amusing_.

(“You’re acting as if he’s moving to another planet, Tony,” May had teased, giving another hard tug to the zipper of Peter’s rolling duffel bag.

Sniffing indignantly, Tony had leant his weight forward atop the luggage so the little teeth came closer together. Their soon-to-be college freshman had left to grab everybody’s lunch orders from Delmar’s, leaving his long-suffering guardians to somehow finagle _every single hoodie their kid owned_ into one bag.

“And _you_ are acting like you won’t be a blubbering mess in his dorm room tomorrow morning.”

May had laughed, but certainly didn’t deny it. She’d gotten the zipper around that last little bend before pushing herself to her feet with an audible crack in her left knee. Tony had waved away the outstretched hand she’d offered, content to remain perched atop Peter’s stuffed luggage.

They were both getting _way_ too old for this.)

Hours later, wondering why they’d bought Peter so much _stuff_ for a dorm that was hardly bigger than his apartment’s bedroom, Tony smoothed a hand down his face.

May had long since passed out cold on the couch, one small throw covering her torso, another her legs. They were both surrounded by boxes upon boxes, clogged up in spaces between coffee table and television stand, or dusty bookshelf and padded recliner, the latter of which Tony slumped into heavily.

Beyond the windows sat a darkened New York City, the tops of neighboring residential buildings lined with strips of neon.

It was a place that breathed and moved long after the brightest lights toned down, Peter Parker’s bread and butter. A brick-and-mortar extension of his presence.

The kid’s territory, his turf, his home, all being left behind for Massachusetts, some four hours away.

Not that Tony wasn’t utterly biased toward MIT. He just happened to be significantly more biased _against_ his kids getting older.

So it goes.

He sent a glance at his watch with tired eyes—it read 12:16 AM, T-minus six hours until U-Haul liftoff—and heaved himself out of the chair.

Most of the lights in the Parker residence were off, including the overhead bulbs in the hallway. But a sliver of sharpened, desk-lamp-white pushed under Peter’s closed bedroom door.

Tony smiled at that, pressed rough-skinned palms into his spine and stretched until feeling the little _pop_ of lower vertebrae, then carefully picked his way over endless boxes of bedding and spare toiletries, school supply surpluses and rolled-up posters.

He knocked on Peter’s door with gentle knuckles, listened for the quiet “it’s open” before letting himself in.

The kid was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, resting against the metal framing of his recently-stripped mattress. His face was lit up by that bright desk lamp, but the backdrop lighting of street lamps dipped the tips of his curls in yellow. Cool air and the midnight sounds of the city came through the open window.

Nestled in his lap was what seemed to be a sizable photo album. Fidgety fingers paused in turning a crinkly page when Peter looked up, just to give Tony a quiet smile in greeting.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself, squirt.” He moved further into the room, noting several small boxes scattered on the floor in a haphazard semi-circle. “You realize there’s a reason we kept the sheets on your top bunk, right?”

Peter snorted, then went back to gazing at the pictures in his lap.

“I know. Just don’t feel like sleeping right now, I guess.”

“Oh, there’s a statement we’ll all regret in a couple hours,” Tony teased, slowly lowering himself to the ground at a slight diagonal from his kid, so as not to block the lighting.

He leant forward to cast a curious glance at the photo album, its pictures catching the sheen of the white lamplight.

“Old memories?”

Peter nodded.

“Old and new.” The album was then lifted up, turned around so Peter could tap an image along the top with his pointer finger. “Lookee, it’s Morgan’s sixth birthday party.”

Tony squinted, tilting his head to the side, then grinned. There they all were—him, Pepper, May, Rhodey, Happy, the five main adults in one little girl’s life—brought to absolute hysterics at the sight of an extremely pleased Morgan. She sat front and center in the frame, remnants of blue-frosted cake clumped into her hair and smeared on her chubby cheeks

“You really know how to capture us at our best,” Tony said, breathing a laugh. He caught a glimpse of the other two photos on the page—Peter making lazy peace signs with Ned and MJ at their post-graduation celebration, and a beaming Ben Parker hoisting a younger Peter onto his shoulders—before the album was turned back around.

“It’s a gift,” his kid responded, to which Tony gave a quiet noise of agreement. He shifted on the floor, trying to alleviate some of the ache in his hips, and looked down when his knee bumped against a worn-down shoe box.

“So, what’s all this?” he asked, gesturing around at the other containers before lifting the shoe box onto his lap. Peter gave it a quick glance, but didn’t move to snatch it away or anything, so Tony figured it would be safe to open.

“It’s just a buncha random stuff I’ve had shoved away in my closet for a while. Mementos, I guess.”

Tony hummed thoughtfully, lifted the top off with a quick “Please don’t tell me you’re a hoarder” that had Peter chuckling, then blinked in mild bewilderment when his own face stared up at him.

Or… more like half of his face, cut off down a folded edge. He sent a quick look Peter’s way, saw he was still fully engrossed in his photo album, and picked the paper up to flatten it out.

It was pretty flimsy, he realized. Like the floppy quality of magazine covers, with its corners sporting wear and tear. He smoothed it down carefully against his knee, and—

Okay, now _there_ was something he hadn’t thought about in a long while, nor had he ever expected to see again: his very first Iron Man photo-op, done for another special edition of Rolling Stone. The photographers had spent hours barking out suggestions, tilting him this way and that, but it’d essentially been Tony’s gig from the get-go. Before he’d even _considered_ accepting the offer, it’d been made plain that he objected to actually being inside the suit.

Something about showcasing “two beautiful faces for the price of one.”

So many shots taken in one day, he remembered, but the one he stared at now had been a favorite in the moment. The suit sat against a backdrop of pure white, left ankle settled over its right knee and hands folded in its lap, nonchalant yet dignified. Tony himself was standing, leant against his creation’s shoulder with crossed arms.

Inventor and invention both stared directly into the camera, faces straight yet slightly cocky.

“I dare you to try screwing around with us,” is what that aura said. A now-distant time, come and gone and boiled into one snapshot of history.

“Oh, wow,” Tony mused, noting the Spring 2009 listing in the top-right corner. “Do you think this could be considered my equivalent of a baby photo?”

Peter looked up with a slight scrunch to his nose.

“What?” he asked, before barely-contained mortification crossed his face.

Tony grinned, handing the cover over to save the kid the energy of snatching it from his hands. Reaching back down into the box, he pulled out the next page and smoothed down those creases too.

Yet another Rolling Stone cover, him and the suit standing side by side, hands raised in the repulsor blast pose. Peter watched on across from him, having moved quickly from sheer embarrassment to a quiet acceptance of his fate.

“Gotta say, Pete—” Tony shuffled the other contents of the box, spotting more metallic reds and golds under several other magazine titles, “—I knew you had a case of hero worship, but this feels next level.”

“Shut up,” Peter muttered, grabbing the box out of Tony’s lap and glaring playfully at the man’s belly-deep laugh. “I was nine, okay? You’d just announced to the whole world you were Iron Man, and—”

“And it was the coolest thing your baby genius brain had ever witnessed?”

Peter rolled his eyes.

“I mean, _basically_.”

And Tony couldn’t even manage another snarky response, because the sincerity in those words had his heart going all gooey in the center. The feeling turned his smirk into a smile, leant him further forward to press gentle lips to his kid’s forehead.

Back when it was just him and Peter, back in that Before period that felt distant and close in equal measure, he foolishly believed his chest would eventually stop its somersaults when this kid went all earnest adoration on him. That it’d get used to the experience and decide it was tired of the gymnastics act.

That line of thinking had been swiftly banished in the After, a scattered cloud of ash—and then the wondrous, overwhelming miracle of Morgan entering the world—helping him realize that Peter had always been more than just his fledgling superhero ward.

Tony swept his eyes around the room once again, and thought of the first time he’d been in here. Everything that fateful first meeting had entailed, and where it had all led to.

It would be strange, always, to line that reality up with this one.

“Just so you know—” Peter said suddenly, snapping Tony out of his thoughts, “—I’ve got just as many cutouts of Steve or Natasha in this thing. So, no bragging rights for you.”

The box’s lid was whisked away from beside Tony’s foot and slipped back on with a hint of finality. Peter pushed the container under his bed, hidden away behind his back, and gave a smirk.

“And none of that compares to the size of my Thor collection. Which you will _never_ see, by the way. Ever.”

Tony blinked at that, jaw a little slack, and then chuckled.

“This hole of yours is only getting bigger, bud. And you’re the one digging it.”

Peter just grinned, looking entirely at ease as he did so.

No trace of apprehension in this penultimate moment crossed his face. No obvious nervousness within the precious few hours leading up to the next big step in his life.

And while that did send a flash of sadness through Tony’s chest, a longing that was all twisted up in his stuttering heartbeat, he couldn’t have been more proud.

****———————** **

Once upon a time, Pepper had explained why Friday SI meetings tended to go past their expected runtimes.

Snappier types wishing to hit all the major discussion points before their weekends crept by…

Sneaky executives taking advantage of the pre-weekend atmosphere to coax distracted hands into signing important forms…

Yada yada yada.

And once upon a time, she’d coached Peter through the most effective and assertive ways to make sure everybody played by the rules and kept on schedule.

But Pepper Potts was Pepper Potts, and Peter Parker—shining new genius head of Stark Industries though he might be—still had a lot to learn.

Which meant today’s innovation meetings had crawled on much longer than anticipated.

And, more importantly, they had him running horribly late.

No exaggeration. It was the ridiculous “I should have arrived around five at the absolute latest, but now it’s close to midnight” kind of late.

He grimaced at the dashboard clock again, put the smallest dose of added pressure on the gas, and tried not to think about how tired he was as he made the narrow turn off the concrete road. Dirt and stones got coughed up under his tires, making for a bumpy ride that eventually smoothed into crunchy gravel.

Following the curves and bends of the remote driveway was second nature by now, practically brainless, the familiar trees and rocks along the way having remained a sign of _home_ years after getting his own place with MJ. Knowing muscle memory would guide him, Peter allowed one hand off the steering wheel to fumble with the dress shirt button at his neck.

“Maybe Tony has it right, always wearing T-shirts under his suit jackets,” he grumbled aloud, swinging into one final turn before coming up onto the lake house gates. A wave of greeting at FRIDAY’s cameras had him going through onto that last stretch of road, where gravel gave way to dirt once more, then grass lengthened by the warmth of summer.

If the relieved pang in his chest at the unobscured sight of the lake house was anything to go by, then this spare weekend was needed a lot more than he’d let on during phone calls with Tony. Peter could hear the promise of a lazy day calling his name, complete with feet kicked up on the coffee table and dust swirling in early beams of sunlight.

He came to a stop beside Morgan’s old tire swing, taking a quick second to shoot a _got here safe_ text off to May and Happy—a habit that had followed him well past his more reckless teenage years—before twisting his key from the ignition and stepping out into the humid night air.

Pepper had left the lights on for him, just as she’d promised before heading to bed. The beams bounced off the door knob while Peter climbed the creaky porch steps, then shone along the length of his engagement band as he wrapped his fingers around the handle. Lock tumblers opened at the presence of his fingerprints, deactivating alarms in seconds, and Peter pushed himself inside.

The immediate sight of a wide-awake Morgan, slouched into the living room’s La-Z-Boy with a phone screen inches from her nose, was no shock.

“Hey, Morgs,” Peter greeted, coming up behind the back of the chair. His presence was barely acknowledged, the text being typed out with fast thumbs no doubt of much greater importance.

Peter huffed a breath through his nose, then smirked.

“So, who are _you_ texting at ungodly hour o'clock? he singsonged, a teasing lilting on the ends of his words. “It's gotta be that Emily girl, right?”

 _That_ got his little sister’s attention. She twisted quickly in her seat, leveling Peter with the glare she’d inherited from Pepper, except the intended effect was blindsided by a reddened tint to her cheeks.

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you it’s rude to get in somebody else's business?”

"Well, it's not really getting into your business if you tell me about her all the time," Peter replied, head tilting in mock thought. “But yes, actually. The same person who told me it’s rude to ignore your sibling when they say hello.”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed.

“Hello. You’re the worst.”

Peter hummed, ruffling her hair with a smile before stepping away.

“Yup. Don’t stay up too much later, okay?”

Morgan just slumped back down in her seat with an exaggerated sigh, laying sideways so her head rested on one arm and her shins dangled off the other.

“God, when did you start getting so _responsible_?”

“It’s called 'learning to appreciate a good night’s sleep,’ Morgan,” Peter said as he approached the stairs. “Gets rid of the eye bags and everything. I’m sure Emily would notice if—”

He dodged the decorative pillow Morgan chucked at his face, desperately trying to keep the volume of his laughter in check as he climbed to the second floor.

One quick shower and goodnight text to MJ later, he was out like a light.

Peter woke up thinking the house was being broken into, the sudden, creaking swing of his bedroom door managing to burst him back into consciousness.

Not all at once, though. Not as he would if there were an actual criminal coming at him, which he supposed was a decent enough comfort in and of itself. But he’d been so exhausted last night that he’d fallen into one of those deep, peaceful, no freaky dreams allowed kind of sleeps, and pulling him out of _that_? It could easily qualify as a crime of its own.

“Wha’?” he mumbled, groggy spots flashing in his eyesight. It was a separate surprise when something else—no _someone_ else—sat down hard enough on his mattress that the momentum sprung him up a bit.

For one wild, crazy second, Peter thought it could be Morgan. Little baby Morgan, with chubby cheeks and a missing front tooth and a blissful lack of sass, catapulting herself onto his bed at the ass crack of dawn to inform him dad was making chocolate-chip pancakes.

Except Morgan wasn’t a baby anymore, and voluntarily waking up earlier than eleven in the morning was now a foreign concept to her. So Peter’s sleep-addled brain shoved that possibility to the side, even before two familiar arms—one flesh, one metal—were wrapping around his shoulders and tugging him into a fierce, oxygen-stealing hug.

“Tony?” Peter exclaimed, voice muffled by the detergent-softened fabric of the man’s shirt. “Wha’—what’s goin’ on? Is everything okay, what’s happening?”

What he got in response was an even harder squeeze—the air whooshed out of his lungs again—a quick rock, back-and-forth two times, before he was let go and allowed to _breathe_.

Peter leant back, trying to get his first true look at Tony, and barely managed it before three separate kisses were placed on his face, right cheek to forehead to left cheek. His eyesight snagged onto the open bedroom door as it happened, noticing Pepper at the threshold with a smile on her face that was only slightly apologetic.

Morgan stood there, too, her grin coming nowhere _close_ to sympathetic. It bordered on shit-eating, actually, as she held her phone aloft, and Peter knew with the clarity of a suffering sibling that she was recording whatever the hell this was.

And _just what was it, anyways_? Because Tony was now speaking across from him, all animated gestures and blinding smiles and bright words, except Peter felt like he focused in around the halfway point of his ramblings.

“—so proud of you, buddy, have you _seen_ them? Did they show them to you? The first one came in the mail today and I ordered every single edition, so they’re _all_ being hung up, every last one of them—”

It was more like… watching Tony talk, rather than listening. Mind desperately playing catch-up, Peter cast a glance at his watch—the one he always wore, same as his web shooters—and saw 1:21 PM blinking up at him.

He came back into himself all at once.

“Wait, Tony—” he said, voice coming out clearer, and it was funny how much a visual read on time affected him nowadays, honestly, “—what’s _happening_? I just woke up, what are you talking about?”

Tony blinked, words either halted in their tracks or already waiting for Peter’s response. Then his eyebrows raised, his chin lowered, and every feature on his face was twisted into that patented _Dad Look_.

“Just woke up,” he deadpanned. “Yes, at one in the afternoon.”

Peter narrowed his eyes.

“Totally not what I want you to focus on right now.”

They held their faces a couple seconds longer, before Tony brought the moment back to its starting form with another elated grin. It crinkled the corners of his eyes, even got the faded traces of scar tissue pulling far upwards, and holy shit, Peter was getting whiplash from this. He could _feel_ it.

“Pep,” Tony breathed, turning to beckon his wife closer with an excited hand. “He’s gotta see this, bring it over.”

Pepper rolled her eyes fondly as she stepped further into the room. For the first time, Peter noticed that something was clutched in her hand.

It looked like… like a magazine, but—

Peter’s stomach swiftly dropped.

_Oh no._

The offending item came down to lightly bonk the top of her husband’s head as Pepper approached them, stayed there while she bent down to press her own kiss to Peter’s forehead. When she settled down on his other side, the magazine had magically wound up in Tony’s grip and was shoved right under Peter’s nose.

There was no looking away even if he wanted to, so he got a front row seat to the results of his first official photo shoot, all glossy and professional, with the Rolling Stone logo and everything.

He had the high-tech glasses, the perfected “messy but not _too_ messy” quality to his curls that a very sweet hairstylist had fretted over an hour beforehand. There was an undone suit jacket worn over a freshly ironed science pun T-shirt, because the folks at PR had decided a bit of character would serve them well in the long run. His arms were bent at the elbows, fingers of one hand lightly brushing the watch on his opposite wrist, and he stared slightly above the camera with a wide grin.

Probably at Ned and MJ, who had performed well on their promises to pull ridiculous faces the entire time.

(“To keep the jitters away, dude,” Ned had said, pulling him in for a hug.

“To keep the fame from clogging your brain up,” MJ had followed with, giving him a lingering kiss that left a lopsided smile on his lips.)

That had been a day, and now _this_ —

 _This, right here_ —

Was… okay, not the _most_ embarrassing photo of himself that he’d ever seen, and that included Spider-Man mishaps, but—

It was up there. Top thirty, at least.

He couldn’t even properly make out the headline—something including his name, the word _fresh_ , and Stark Industries in fat red lettering—before a metal finger was tapping the cover excitedly.

“That’s you, Pete!” Tony exclaimed, laughing in what sounded like disbelief, as if he hadn’t alsobeen plastered under this same brand a million times before. “It’s you! On the cover of _Rolling Stone magazine_! See?”

Peter lightly shoved the material down onto his lap, convinced that if Tony tapped his professionally-Photoshopped face any harder, it would activate some latent voodoo powers and suddenly _nobody_ would want the newest SI owner posing under their headlines.

“Yes, Tony. I can see the magazine.”

“I really don’t think you do. I mean—buddy! Look! It’s—Pepper, babe, look. Do you see this? Have you seen this, Pep?”

Pepper only chuckled, making it apparent that she’d been asked that same question no less than twenty times since the mail arrived. She didn’t even bother to truly respond—hardly had the time, really—before Tony was twisting to look at his daughter.

“You’re getting this on tape, right? You’ve been recording this?”

Morgan gave a thumbs up, grin still looking a tad too wicked for Peter’s tastes.

“Oh, for sure. Every second, dad.”

“Good. Great, that’s great. That’s amazing.” He turned back around so fast it practically gave Peter vertigo.

“I’m so proud of you, Peter. This is…” He tapped the magazine again, eyes wide. “This is so big. This is _huge_. Look at you! Look at your smile! And your __face__!”

Peter huffed a breath, closing his eyes in exasperation. He was still exhausted, he really didn’t _want_ to look at his face. He couldn’t care less about any of that right now.

But Tony did, so he opened his eyes to follow the line of the man’s extended arm, down to where his finger obscured the lower half of Peter’s cheek. Then he made the trip back up, from fingertip to elbow to shoulder, and further still to Tony’s face.

And of course, he was smiling. Open, excited, earnest, proud, just like always nowadays.

(Nowadays meaning the last decade or so. For a good long while.

Tony Stark, always _smiling_. At such odds with the man he’d first met, who’d smiled just as much but never like this.

He was the guy who deserved it the most, and now he had it.

So Peter could never help but to smile back.)

“I see, Tony,” he said—he _promised_ —voice downright quiet compared to the loudness beforehand. “Pretty cool.”

Tony’s eyes glinted, and he scoffed.

“ _Pretty cool_ , he says. Like this isn’t history in the making. You’re a card, Parker.”

Cool, metal fingertips came up to cup the back of Peter’s neck, pulling him forward gently until another kiss could be placed on his head.

“Whenever I think you’re finished growing up, you just keep surprising me, buddy,” the man murmured against his hairline, tone hushed, reverent, terrified, _loving_.

All of that, in a snapshot moment.

Then he was pulling away, whisking the magazine off Peter’s lap with a flourish.

“ _This_ —” he started, picking himself off the bed and making for the doorway, “—is going on the fridge. I will design an ultra-strength magnet to stick this _entire thing_ on the fridge.”

A quick ruffle of Morgan’s hair later, he was turning into the hallway and out of sight.

Peter stared at the spot he’d disappeared into, only turning when he felt a squeeze on his shoulder. Pepper’s warm eyes blinked back at him, lips curving in a soft smile.

“Still quite the change, isn’t it?” she asked.

Knowing she was talking about more than just the new job title, Peter nodded.

“Sure is.”

She hummed, cupping his cheek for a brief second before she stood up as well, moving to pull the curtains open a bit. A solid rectangle of sunlight shot out over the bedroom, tangling up inside the folds of Peter’s discarded blankets.

“I covered up some French toast slices for you, whenever you start feeling hungry,” Pepper said as she headed for the door. Peter returned her smile in quiet thanks, and then she was gone too.

Now it was just him and Morgan, who still had her phone camera pointed in his direction. And while her grin had become decidedly less… _sharkish_ , by now, he couldn’t resist the unimpressed lift of his eyebrows he sent her way.

Or the casual middle finger he gave, which had the intended effect of making her laugh.

“Love you too!” she called, the last thing her phone picked up before it was lowered, recording over. Peter waved her away with a _shoo_ gesture, and listened to her chuckling all the way down the stairwell.

Alone again, he flopped backwards onto his mattress with a contented sigh. Sunlight hit the plane of his cheek, causing his eyes to fall shut through instinctual reaction alone. Sounds floated all around him, up the stairs or through the window panes, inside and outside and everywhere, a blanket.

There was the domestic noise of idle family chatter, a television set being clicked on, someone stacking plates inside a cupboard.

Farther on, the gentle hit of water against the lake’s rock-and-mud shore fluttered between the notes of birdsong and rustling leaves.

And beyond that, so distant only Peter’s sensitive ears could pick it up, the crunch of tires meeting gravel and a favored song set low on a staticky radio signaled the arrival of Rhodey.

Peter knew that later, three more cars would make their own entrances. May and Happy in one, growing grey, comfortable, older, _together_ , dancing to 80s hits in their kitchen all the while.

Ned in another, visiting for the weekend before catching an early-morning flight come Monday. Always traveling in each other’s orbits, he and Peter. Busy and bored in equal ways and equal times, knowing through the laws of elasticity alone that somehow, they’d always end up back in the same shared spaces, whenever one needed the other.

And MJ coming in last. Someone he’d kissed goodbye just yesterday morning, but who he was already itching to see again. The person who’d already witnessed the worst he had to offer—the other side of that “for better or” equation—and still dreamed of making it official.

All of them, coming to join the rest of the family. A complete set, crowded around the dinner table like it hadn’t been months since existing in the same room. Like the time spent apart was just the time for making memories, crafting stories, going places, chasing adventures, so that when they wound up back around that dinner table again, there was more to share than the last time.

_So it goes _.__

And Peter laid atop his covers, dangerously close to slipping back into sleep, chest filled to bursting with belonging. He teetered there, right on the edge between consciousness and the lack of it, when he zoned in on Tony’s excited voice at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well, he _should_ be awake. I think I scared all the exhaustion out of him when I ran into his room.”

“ _Oh, god,_ ” came May through a phone speaker, laughter on her words. “ _You’re horrible._ ”

“You would have done the same thing if he were at your place. The shoot came out beautifully.”

__“_ Well, I’m not gonna deny that. _”__

Tony’s subsequent grin was so loud it could be heard.

“You want me to run the phone upstairs real quick? I think Rhodey just got here.”

Peter, already sitting up with shining eyes, smiled at May’s gleeful, __“_ Yes. Let me talk to my handsome nephew. _”__

“Sure thing.”

At the sound of eager footfalls bounding up the stairs, Peter gave a secret, fond laugh under his breath.

 _Never a quiet moment around here_.

Then he climbed to his feet and left his bedroom, ready to meet Tony halfway.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! kudos & comments are always much loved
> 
> <3000


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